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Ayurveda
: Ancient Heritage in the Age of Globalisation
The religious aspect of Ayurveda also constituted a
popular theme in its historiography. Jayne’s article (1925)
on the healing gods has already been referred to. She has
made a painstaking effort to account not only of such
medical deities as Ashvins or Dhanvantari but also of
those supposedly functioning as healer, like Aditya,
Brahma, Indra and Varuna or Vayu among others. A
comparatively new paper by Zysk (1989) is significant in
understanding
mantras
i.e. ritualistic spells in Ayurveda.
Similar is the paper of Rose (1987) who has discussed the
magic squares in Ayurvedic systems. A paper on
Dhanvantari in Indian literature by Rao (1972) may also
be mentioned as helpful write up.
The extant historiography of Ayurveda also
contains some works which may be judged as
‘compartmentalistc’ studies. Methodologically they
remain confined mainly to the compilation of scientific
materials of Ayurveda available in different sources.
Nonetheless, their contribution to historiography is
significant as they did study the Ayurvedic texts as well as
connected literature. Mention should also be made of the
book of Joshi (1973) on medicine in the epic
Ramayana
and a small paper by Jain (1978) who dwelt upon medical
references in the
Ashtadhyayi
, a grammar-book of 5
th
century BC. Both of these works offer useful materials.
The study of Bhatanagar (1984) on what he considers as
